Normalcy
by cricketchick1990
Summary: Normalcy is a strange thing. His idea of normal includes monsters and shinigami and the weight of Zangetsu at his back. This version of normal, the one he would have had before he met her, is less than he expected. IchiRuki


AUTHORS NOTE: So apparently I am obsessed with the loss and return of Ichigo's powers...because well..._angst. _The prompt for this one is normalcy, and this is how I perceive Ichigo to have handled the change in his different types of normal. Its angsty, and a little bit romantic (I hope) and of course, IchiRuki.

There is a couple of lines that are inspired by Six60's "Only to Be" (this is a song you definitely need to listen to) – which was definitely my muse for this one-shot. Another song I would recommend by them is "Lost", and I can't wait for the day that I can figure out a plot that works in with it. It's a beautiful tune, and you should listen to both the original version and the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra version, both are fantastic!

I am also happily accepting prompts, as I am thinking of making this oneshot thing a regular occurrence now – so if you have a theme or a scene (I can rhyme too!) that you would like to see then let me know and I will do my best!

Hope you enjoy and please review!

DISCLAIMER: If I owned Bleach...we'd see Ichigo completely topless waaay more often. That boy is _fiiine_.

* * *

><p>ooOoOoo<p>

It's a strange thing, normality.

Before he met her, his idea of normal was pretty similar to the rest of the world. He woke up, brushed his teeth, and pulled his pants on one leg at a time just like anyone else. The only thing that made his life extraordinary was the fact that his father was crazy as fuck, and he could see and communicate with the dead.

Then he met her.

Kuchiki Rukia.

Suddenly his idea of normal was twisted, upended and he was thrust into a world full of hollows and shinigami and powers he struggled to comprehend. Things moved at warp speed, but she was there to steady him, to stop his head reeling from the blur of demons and fighting and strange, strange events that seemed to follow him everywhere. She was there to keep him centred, to keep his ego in check, to teach him how to defend and protect in ways that would have seemed impossible before even if he had imagined them.

He still remembers the way her energy burnt when it flooded through his veins for the first time, but it was worth it, because suddenly he had the ability to help both the living and the dead.

_He'd give anything to experience that feeling again. _

When he lost her, and was powerless again, he realised that there was something more connecting them, something hovering in the spaces between their entwined fates.

He sought to rescue her, and all of a sudden he was ripped from his body, and it was a race against time to recapture the power he lost before he became one of the monsters he'd been fighting ever since he met her.

He barely managed to make it out alive.

Then there was the Soul Society, fighting, the interruption of her execution, a wave of pink, a hollow mask cracking under his hand. There was victory, then betrayal, and they were suddenly on the brink of war.

He returned to his own world acutely aware of the monster in his head that should only have existed in nightmares, and did everything he could to keep it from coming to the surface. She called him out for it, called him weak, and he sought out another way, another method that would enable him to harness this new power.

There were vizard, and menos and arrancar and a maze of tunnels and Nel clinging to his back and the ever increasing strength of the mask he formed in his hand. There was a hole through his chest, and pain, endless pain, then blinding white enveloping his body as he skirted away from death's door.

Then came the attack on Karakura. There was confusion and understanding, when his _shinigami_ father stepped between him and his enemy; despair, when Hyorinmaru pierced Hinamori's heart; revenge, when Gin made his final stand.

At one point, the line between illusion and reality became so incredibly blurred he wondered if he would notice if he was fighting _himself_.

It's ironic, he thinks, that in the end that is exactly what he did. He fought _Zangetsu_ for the right to protect, to defend others, when all his _zanpakuto_ wanted to do was protect him from himself.

He thought, at that time, that the loss of his power wouldn't be the same as losing his own self.

The realisation that it was exactly the same, hurt like hell.

The gradual decline of his spiritual pressure was painful, to the point where at times he thought he could feel his bones cracking under the strain. He felt every bit of the slow bleeding of that life from his body, every tug of his resolve being wrenched from his heart.

But Rukia was there, her reiatsu filling the gaping holes in his own, and for a short time, it was bearable.

They were all there.

He doesn't remember his second collapse, or the pain of his soul being ripped apart, but he remembers the look in her eyes when he eventually woke.

There was more than just sadness, concern and regret in that cool violet-blue, more than just friendship and comradeship and affection. There was something deeper, something that skirted the line between we're-just-friends and almost-in-love and flirted dangerously with definitely-in-love. He almost crossed the boundary between them then, almost flung himself off of the cliff and into the abyss.

He wonders what would have happened if he had made that jump; what would have happened if he just had more _time_.

He wonders if he would have even considered throwing himself off of that edge if she wasn't disappearing before his eyes.

Yes, he thinks, he would have. Eventually.

He doesn't have that chance now.

When he lost sight of her, another bit of him disappeared as well.

ooOoOoo

This new life, the one without spirits and ghosts and hollows and shinigami...is going to take some getting used to.

Sitting down for breakfast, with his father crouched in the corner nursing his head, and his sisters eating their meal across the table is not like it used to be. Sure, he wakes up in the morning, brushes his teeth and pulls on his pants one leg at a time just like he always has. But now, he can't see the spirits that Karin so clearly can, can't even feel their presence. She tries to hide it from him and he wishes she wouldn't, because even if he can't see them, he knows they are there by the way she acts and all he wants to do is _help_.

School is worse. He finds his substitute pass in his bag one day, and is turning it in his hand and remembering when Uryu flashes past in the hallway with some bullshit excuse thrown over his shoulder. He can't help but watch him go and _want_.

It's just not the same.

He's not as close with Sado and Orihime and Uryu as he was before, they are lost in their own mission to protect and defend. They are constantly watching him, waiting for him to break, and he feels them all slowly drifting away from him as they continue on with their lives and he's stuck in limbo, trying to shape his own. Most of the time, he feels like he's just turning the pages of a book, flicking past dialogue and events and excitement while Sado and Orihime and Uryu are all lost in the story he wants to read but isn't allowed to.

They tread cautiously around the subject of that world he wishes he still belonged to but doesn't, and Keigo is the only one brave enough to mention Rukia in front of him, even going as far as to ask if he misses her.

Of course he does.

But that life isn't meant to exist anymore, so he tells Keigo that he has no reason to miss Rukia, because he shouldn't be clinging onto that world anyway.

That night he takes the combat pass from his bag, and presses it to his chest experimentally, watching his reflection carefully in the mirror for any sign of _Zangetsu_ materialising at his back. There is nothing different in the image reflected back at him, just a bright-haired teenager in a black shirt with a piece of wood on his chest. He laughs at himself after, because how stupid can you get?

He throws the pass into the river the next day.

He's been living in expectancy, yearning for something _more_. He's losing himself on this path, and he knows it's because his mind is confined to the literal ghosts of his past. He wonders if he will ever be able to leave it behind, because while it still haunts him, this new normal will never feel like it's meant for him.

It's too much like other peoples normal, the one that he used to want and now has and wishes he could give back.

This normal, is wrong.

His normality is monsters and shinigami and fighting and the weight of _Zangetsu_ on his back, and in his hand. It's her by his side; it's _them_, drawn together and glued by an intangible bond.

It's funny, that even when he balanced on the precipice of the world of the living and the dead, he never felt as torn as he does now. He used to cross the line between them in the space between heartbeats, but now he's stuck fast on one side, and the boundary he used to flirt with on a regular basis is now an ever-expanding chasm between them.

He's unsure just what world he wants to belong to, but he knows that he no longer has the luxury of determining his own fate. He wishes that he still had the chance to make that decision.

He wishes he still had the option of following her into eternity.

ooOoOoo

He remembers thinking that he didn't trust Kubo Ginjo at first meeting, he'd fought far too many battles to readily allow someone to get closer than arms length, and he remembers struggling to determine if the man was his friend or his enemy.

In the end, it turns out he was a bit of both.

But he was so wrapped up in the idea of regaining his powers, that when he first felt that flicker of _Zangetsu_ in the initial pulse of power through his combat pass, he forgot about not trusting Ginjo anymore.

He regrets that now.

The sword through his chest feels like a block of ice against his ribcage, and his heart thumps feebly against it. He can't breathe, and all he can feel is the blood pooling in his veins and capillaries until they feel like they might burst. His vision blurs, Ginjo and Tsukishima wavering in and out of focus as Ginjo twists the blade, and his fullbring is ripped from him.

The loss of his power hurts ten times as much as the gaping hole in his chest, though not as much as the loss of his friends and family at Tsukishima's hands, and he sinks like a stone, drowning in his own despair.

He wishes Rukia were here.

The image of her in his mind is enough to break the chains weighing him down, and he rises to surface and asks, no, demands that his power be returned.

He's not sure exactly what he had plans to do when Ginjo laughs and keeps walking, and he screams his name in desperation, but the thrust of another blade through his back brings it to a choking halt

It takes him a while to realise whose hands are on that sword, but when he does, he knows what will eventuate even before the first pulse of reiatsu hits him.

After all, she is the one that gave him his screwed up version of normal in the first place; it's only fitting that she be the one to aid in its return. He basks in the burn of her energy permeating his entire being, bathes in the light of his reiatsu and hers as it swirls around them.

His shihakusho feels like an old friend, flowing and comfortable. _Zangetsu_ feels similar, heavy and solid on his shoulders and familiar in his hand.

He draws in his power, compresses it, and takes a moment to marvel at how natural it feels under his skin.

Rukia, standing next to him, is more than this. She's his resolve, his will, his reason for fighting.

With her here, he knows he can find his normality again.

ooOoOoo

They are alone at the edge of the forest, when they take that next step.

He watches as she rests a hand on his chest, healing kido thrumming between her fingers and his wounds. It's completely unnecessary; they both know that, because he has always healed faster than most. She does it anyway, because she wants to, and because he will allow her to. And he likes the contact, the tangibility of it. He likes the way her brows furrow in concern and the way she blows an errant strand of hair out of her eyes as she concentrates. He likes how her skin feels on his, the way her fingers trail along his shoulder as she steps away.

This, this is right, he thinks. He can feel _Zangetsu_ in the back of his mind, feel the pulse and pressure of his power in time with his heartbeat, can feel the strength in his bones, in his _soul_. Its right, that she was the one to give him back his resolve, his purpose.

This is more like the normal he's used to.

Its right, the way her reiatsu feels against his, the ebb of his power filled with the flow of hers.

He's been hers and she's been his ever since _Sode no Shirayuki_ pierced his heart. There is respect, and understanding and something else that could just be love between them, and he knows that given the opportunity, he would give his life for her.

He meets her gaze, and catches her fingers in his own, raising an eyebrow in silent query.

She doesn't say anything in return. She doesn't need to.

It's more than just good, that she is there, pressed against him with one hand at his hip and another in his hair. It's fitting, the way her mouth feels under his, the way she takes his breath and he takes hers and they just _be_.

She follows him home, lies on his bed with her back pressed against his chest and his arm draped around her waist. He palms her hip and she turns, pressing a kiss to the hollow of his throat, and he sighs into her hair.

They don't sleep, but they don't speak either, neither one of them wanting to cross into the territory of _I-missed-you's_ and _why-didn't-you-come-back's_ and _I'm-sorry-I-left's_. Being together is enough to atone for the last seventeen months of separation, and it feels just like they were never apart; in fact, he thinks, they are closer than before.

It's strange, being on the other side of the line that they never had the chance to bridge before, but natural and safe at the same time. It's a different kind of normal than they used to have, but this one, this one he wants to get used to.

His old normal, the one with monsters and shinigami, family and friends, is all he ever wanted. This normal, the one with monsters and shinigami and friend and family and _Rukia_, will be more than enough.

* * *

><p>So there you have it! Please let me know what you think in a review - and if you are after some more reading, check out my other IchiRuki fics! I promise not all of them are angst!<p>

_cricketchick1990_


End file.
